Unilever has severed its final ties with the founding Lever family by way of a £715million share purchase.

The consumer goods group said it had bought out the rights left in family trusts set up by co-founder William Hesketh Lever as part of a move to streamline the share structure of the Magnum IceCream and Liptons tea owner.

The rights were convertible in 2038 to 70.9million shares of Unilever Plc, or about 2.4 per cent of the combined total of firm, which has a dual listing in both London and Amsterdam.

Divorce: Unilever has bought out its founding family's remaining £715milion stake in the firm

It marks the end of an era, severing a century old link between the firm and the family of the industrialist, philanthropist and politician.

Lever started work at his father’s wholesale grocery business in Bolton and in 1886 established a cleaning products firm called Lever Brothers, with his sibling James.

He began manufacturing Sunlight Soap and built a business empire with many well-known brands, such as Lux and Lifebuoy.

The firm’s Port Sunlight factory still exists today.

Lever went on to become a Liberal MP for Wirral and then a Peer, as Lord Leverhulme, where he was a cheerleader for the expansion of the British Empire into countries which supplied key ingredients for his soaps.

The share purchase will reduce the share count boosting full-year earnings per share by 2 per cent.

Finance director Jean-Marc Huet said: ‘It is another step in the simplification of Unilever’s capital structure, making Unilever easier to understand, and eliminating ahead of time the burden of a significant dilution of shareholders’ interests.’

The price Unilever paid the trusts is equivalent to £10.09-a–share a discount of 63 per cent to the closing share price on May 16.